Biden/Hunter Scandal Part II by Don Frost

            There’s a scandal brewing around the Democratic presidential candidate, Joe Biden. If you haven’t heard about it, it’s not surprising. The “liberal” media is doing a masterful job of turning it into a non-story. That is, after all, their duty if they want to get Biden elected, and they do want him elected.

            A little background: Biden/Hunter Scandal, Part I:

            When Joe was vice president he was also Barack Obama’s point man in Ukraine. Joe’s son, Hunter, joined the board of Burisma, the Ukraine-owned energy company, in 2014. Hunter doesn’t know squat about energy companies, so one must wonder why Burisma plucked him out of nowhere to offer him the post. None the less he was paid $50,000 a month in a country where the annual household income is (in U.S. dollars) $1,694.

            One must also wonder how much energy-clueless Hunter could contribute to board meetings in a country where the national language – Ukrainian – is spoken by nearly everyone. But that aside, on Jan. 23, 2018, Joe appeared on a panel of the Council on Foreign Relations in which he boasted how he got a Ukrainian prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, fired in a classic example of quid pro quo.

            Speaking to the panel members – in a recorded video – he said he was in Ukraine to deliver a loan guarantee of a billion U.S. dollars at a meeting with President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. They’d promised to fire Shokin, but they hadn’t done so. As the two men were leaving the meeting, Joe said, “Nah . . . we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, ‘You’re not the president.’ I said, ‘Call him.’ [Joe laughs] I said, ‘I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. . . . I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’

            “Well, son of a bitch [Joe laughs], he got fired.”

            According to Webster’s dictionary, quid pro quo means, “One thing in return for another.” President Trump got impeached because he offered Ukraine a quid pro quo deal. He hinted he’d give Ukraine $250 million in aid if they’d investigate the activities of the Bidens in their country. (Ukraine didn’t.) Biden didn’t hint at his offer of a quid pro quo, he flat-out said it: If you fire the guy, I’ll give you a billion dollars. (Ukraine did.) Trump got impeached for hinting at a quid pro quo, Biden gets his party’s nomination for president for brazenly stating a quid pro quo and even bragging that Obama was in on the deal. Go figure.

            Shokin, at the time, was investigating Hunter’s employer, Burisma, but, according Obama and “many Western countries,” that had nothing to do with why they wanted Shokin gone. They wanted him fired because, they alleged, he wasn’t tough enough on rooting out corruption in a government that runs on corruption. So Shokin is now gone and Ukraine remains the undisputed world leader in corruption. Good job, Barack and Joe!

            Throughout Republican questioning the ethics and morality of Hunter finding such outrageously lucrative employment in a foreign country where Dad exercised such a powerful influence, Joe, the Democrats, and their allies in the media maintained Joe had nothing to do with Hunter’s good fortune. “Nothing to see here, folks; just keep moving,” all insisted. As they’re doing now with the newest twist on this scandal.

            So let’s get back to that new scandal: Biden/Hunter Scandal, Part II:

            The story was broken by the New York Post. Briefly, here’s what the Post’s story said: In April, 2019, Hunter turned a laptop over to a computer repair shop in Wilmington, Del., and never returned to claim it. The shop owner, after taking legal possession of the abandoned computer, shared some revealing emails he found on the hard drive.

            He had taken the precaution of making a copy of the hard drive and that is what he turned over to Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello. Giuliani, in turn, turned it over to the Post. The computer was reported to have been seized by the FBI in December, 2019, and the FBI refuses to confirm or deny there is any sort of investigation underway.

            The Post reported that an April, 2015, email to Hunter, Vadym Pzharskyi, an adviser to Burisma, thanked Hunter “for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure.”

            The Biden camp immediately came up with Joe’s official schedule for the period mentioned and quickly – and not surprisingly – determined that Joe did not attend any such meeting. As though that ended the matter; as though Joe’s “official schedule” accounted for every last second of his every waking moment; as though it included every “chance encounter” he had throughout every day; as though Joe, a professional politician, hadn’t learned in 47 years waging political wars that keeping some meetings off the official record is smart politics.

            Whether Joe met with Pzharskyi or not, unless the Post story is a complete fabrication, Hunter promised Pzharskyi face time with Dad and face time with powerful politicians is currency in Ukraine as well as Washington.

            Another email from Pzharskyi to Hunter that Fox News said was authenticated by one of the people copied on it, reads, “We urgently need your advice on how you could use your influence to convey a message/signal, etc. to stop what we consider to be politically motivated actions.” This is believed to be a reference to an ongoing investigation of Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky.

            The Post also reported that the hard drive included a video allegedly showing Hunter smoking crack while having sexual relations with an unidentified woman, as well as other sexual acts.

            Beyond the Pzharskyi email, Fox News obtained another email which included a discussion of “remuneration packages” for six people in a deal with a Chinese energy company. That email includes a note that “Hunter has some office expectations he will elaborate.” Fox reported it also made cryptic references to “the big guy.” If Hunter Biden is “Hunter” in this email, who do you suppose “the big guy” could possibly be?

            At the time, Joe, as vice president, was also Obama’s point man in China.

            The “liberal” media has never been shy about championing Leftist causes and people, but never has it been so blatant as in the way it is covering this story. It is doing backflips to discredit the Post story, from burying it deep inside newspapers to totally ignoring it.

            ABC News, for example, didn’t even mention the Post story on in its Oct. 21 broadcast. But it did feature clips of an interview with Joe’s wife, Jill, on “The View.” She, too, ducked the Post story, saying only, “As a mother . . . I don’t like to see my son attacked . . . and I certainly don’t like to see my husband attacked. . . . The American people don’t want to hear these smear attacks on my family. The American people are suffering . . .” Deflect, deflect, deflect.

            Jill, as former President Harry Truman said, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

            Of course, the Post story does not “attack” anyone. It merely reports what it found on what is purportedly Hunter’s laptop. Interestingly, Hunter has yet to deny the laptop, the ultimate source of this bizarre turn in the Biden/Ukraine Scandal, was his.

            You can almost hear Joe’s handlers telling Joe and Hunter, “Just keep your mouths shut. Don’t even deny the story. Let’s get Jill out in front of this thing. We’ll have her talk as a mother; she’s just protecting her child; she’s just a wife supporting her husband. . . .”

            The “liberal”-leaning Associated Press was at pains to point out that the New York Post is a tabloid, suggesting it was of the same ilk as supermarket newspapers that publish stories about JFK being alive and living in a posh nursing home; or confessions of the love child Elvis fathered with an alien from another planet. Actually, a tabloid is just a roughly 12-inch by 12-inch newspaper that opens like a book. The “liberal” Chicago Sun-Times is a tabloid.

            The AP also pointed out the story was “published by the conservative-leaning New York Post.” In other words, “No need to trouble yourself with wondering if it’s true, dear reader. Just consider the source: conservative.” The AP never refers to “liberal”-leaning publications as “liberal-leaning.”

            Giuliani explains why he gave the hard drive to the Post rather than the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, or any other Left-leaning publication: “. . . if they took it, they would spend all the time they could to try to contradict it before they put it out.”

            Recall the media coverage of the Steele Dossier, opposition research financed by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party preceding the 2016 election. This document purported to prove that Trump and the Russians colluded to swing the election to Trump. The media trumpeted the dossier’s every revelation as though it was gospel.

            How different the media’s coverage of the Biden/Ukraine Scandal. They don’t even bother with the anemic, lawsuit-dodging word “allegedly.” Their coverage is liberally sprinkled with harsh phrases calculated to cast doubt on the story: “. . . looking to undermine Joe Biden . . .” “. . . a tabloid story offering bizarre twists to a familiar line of attack . . .” “. . . disinformation experts say . . .” “. . . unfounded claims . . .” “. . . did not present evidence . . .” “. . . a widely discredited theory . . .” “ . . . the unfounded idea . . .” “. . . unverified emails . . .” “. . . unconfirmed claims . . .”

            The entire Steele Dossier was unconfirmed, unfounded, unverified, and ultimately discredited by the exhaustedly researched Mueller Report to the horror of “liberals.” The media merely tempered its reports of every “revelation” in the dossier with the perfunctory use of the word, “allegedly.”

Don Frost blogs at www.Commonsense931.wordpress.com